


Courtship Tokens

by Anxiety_Pickle



Series: Analogous Structures [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, GOD what iS THIS, Kakashi is here in spirit, M/M, Obito is a trash bastard, Part one of Konan and Obito's redemption road trip, Sasuke Is Bad At Feelings, Sasuke is tired of his shit, Uzushio Worldbuilding, Uzushiogakure | Hidden Eddy Village, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:53:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anxiety_Pickle/pseuds/Anxiety_Pickle
Summary: “A courting necklace?” He whistles. “Going old fashioned, Uzumaki? Don’t worry! I’m sure you’ll get Itachi’s blessing.”Sasuke is going to murder someone. Obito, Naruto, himself, it doesn’t matter, one of them is going to die here. Leave the island, start a new life in Kusagakure. Change his name. They’d never find the bodies.Naruto sputters and fumes like a broken exhaust pipe and Sasuke says, before he can stop himself, “You’re legally married to Kakashi.”
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito, Konan & Uchiha Obito, Konan/Nagato | Pain, Uchiha Obito & Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Series: Analogous Structures [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061738
Comments: 22
Kudos: 255





	Courtship Tokens

**Author's Note:**

> I make bad decisions
> 
> Please this was a joke and then I made it a Thing. Anyways I guess this is a series now? Just me dicking around on the internet with my post-story headcanons that no one asked for feel free to ignore this

Uzushio is all of Kusagakure’s heat with none of the tactical advantages. It is, however, a peak tourist destination.

Or it would be, if not for the message he got from Yugito. She and Fu are still working in Kusagakure with a new relief program provided by Iwagakure by means of reparation. There's still relations to be smoothed over, generations worth of tension built up between the two countries, but they're working on it. Or so Fu says. The postcard that Aya had tied around her talons is about a week old, of Fu with a blue ribbon tied around her hand and Yugito with a matching one that was almost certainly put there against her will in front of the oldest tree in the village, branches hung with ceremonial ribbons. On the back is printed in Yugito’s neat, even handwriting, juxtaposed by Fu’s messy chicken-scratch, _Obito’s around again. I heard he and Konan are going to Uzushio to look for Zetsu. Good luck._

Obito is enough of a legal nightmare on his own to warrant a preemptive headache. Nobody had actually proved that Obito was alive, despite the lack of a body recovered from the war, but Konoha had labelled him dead for years, which brought up the interesting question of what you could charge someone with if they committed crimes while they were previously considered dead. 

If his idiot cousin is here, that means Zetsu is here too, and Sasuke wants absolutely nothing to do with that. Avoiding one apocalypse was enough for him. 

“Sasuke!” Naruto yells from the water. Ocean foam splashes around his calves before pulling back around his ankles, roaring over the sharp accumulation of gravel at the beachfront. The wind smells like salt and seaweed. “Look at this starfish!”

It's bright red, like a ruby fished out of the earth, and it looks like every other starfish he’s stopped to point out. 

“Stop harassing the wildlife.”

He pouts, but sticks it back in the water and goes back to trawling this stretch of hot sand for keepsakes. He has a bottle in their room in which he's collecting anything that he finds that catches his eye for Sakura and Ino. The last Naruto heard from them, Ino had volunteered to work for Inoichi's clinic, and Sakura had joined the civilian movement to get ROOT members rehabilitated. 

Sasuke folds his legs more comfortably against the warm rock under him and turns to Ryoko, curled up on the stone to sunbathe. “Have you heard anything from Itachi?”

She opens one disinterested purple eye only to close it again, thoroughly bored with his company. _“Not since yesterday.”_

“Hm.” 

Whatever. Zetsu is Obito’s problem now.

“Sasuke!”

“If you’re going to show me another starfish, you can shove it up your-”

Naruto stomps up to him and shakes a necklace of bleached white shells in front of his face. “I was gonna give you this, you stupid bastard-”

He grabs it out of his hands, ignoring his offended shrieking. The shells themselves are pretty, strung through with golden twine, grey and blue beads collected around the tie. “When did you make this? I was with you all day.”

“I don’t owe you an explanation.” He crosses his arms. “I can take it back if you don’t want it.”

“Fuck you.” Sasuke says, and puts it in his pocket.

 _“Eiko is coming.”_ Ryoko flicks her tail. He can tell from her tone of voice that she’s amused. 

Naruto takes the time to appear affronted. “Why doesn’t she have a nickname?”

“Enough of your pestering, Fox.” 

“Kids!” Eiko approaches from the horizon, over the teeth of jagged basalt. Her hair is pinned behind her head in an elaborate braid that some of the kids wove this morning. “They’re starting with the mask-making, if you want to see!”

Naruto jumps to his feet and grabs Sasuke’s hand, yanking him up. “We’re coming!”

Naruto is already elbow-deep in the mask making process by the time Sasuke trudges over to the house. 

The community here is tight knit. Most of them are what remains of the hidden village that used to be here, stranded on one side of the river after it flooded and ruined most of the architecture and environment. The hanging buildings are the only things that survived. Some of the floating walkways, too, decorated with blooming orange fire lilies and white-spotted canna. A woman in the corner of the room sits, twisting together a wicker basket.

Eiko catches his gaze in the corner of the room long enough to give him a thumbs-up. Her husband, cross-legged beside her (and also the one who sponsored the trip, so Sasuke refrains from glaring at him), smiles and mimics the gesture. 

He crouches next to Naruto. He doesn’t really care for festivities, but the fuinjutsu they sew into the masks proves interesting.

“Sasuke.” Naruto whispers conspiratorially. “This is so cool.” 

“Hm.”

“Stop using your Sharingan, you’re draining all the fun out of it.” 

So he instead focuses on the process. He watches the seals, one of them he recognizes as protection, get painted on the inside of the wood.

“This is all so cool.” Naruto smiles down at the mask like it hung the stars. “Sasuke, they know my Mom.” 

“Everyone knows your Mom, she was a Jinchuuriki.”

Naruto shoves him. “Knows her. Hana has a photo album!” He points to the girl in the corner with her hair done up in a bun. The collar of her dress hides the strands of fiery red hair in the back that are falling out. One thing he doesn’t like about this place is the heat, but inside the shade of the house it’s manageable. “I asked her if I could take a couple pictures with me.”

Sasuke eases down to sit next to him, shoulder to shoulder, even though it’s too hot for that. “You’re painting that seal wrong.”

“Naruto!” Hana lifts her paintbrush, tipped with black as deep as her eyes. “Don’t mess up the sealwork! You don’t want that thing to explode in your face! Eiko!” She whirls around, one hand placed on he  
r hip. “Didn’t you teach them anything about seals? Who taught you this, your craftsmanship would make my father cry.”  
“Fuinjutsu wasn’t a notable part of the Konoha curriculum.” Sasuke replies. 

“Course it isn't.” She grumbles, and leans down to correct the mistake. She pauses when she sees the necklace spilling out of his pocket.

“Oh!” She blinks. “Aw, you did give it to him.”

Naruto goes as red as her hair. “You told me to!”

Sasuke frowns. “What? What does it mean?”

“No one tell him.” She brushes her palms on her apron. 

Sasuke looks at Naruto. “What does it mean?”

“How should I know?”

“Dumbass.”

 _“You asked.”_

Ryoko slithers onto his lap then, bursting in to alleviate some of the tension building in the room, quickly followed by Aya. Her wingspan, speckled with darker shades now, is larger than it was a month ago. She lands directly on his shoulder, throwing off his balance and startling the rest of the room. He doesn’t have it in him to tell her she doesn’t fit there anymore.

_“Sasuke! There's this chakra figure moving around that kinda reminds me of-"_

Oh no. 

“No.”

 _“It’s not_ my fault they're here.” 

“Naruto.” He sighs. “Obito and Konan are here.”

“What?” He startles. “What for? Is Zetsu back?”

He hopes not. He doesn’t feel like going toe to toe with extra dimensional eldritch monsters at the moment. 

When they were in Suna, Temari sent him letters of complaint for a week about the property damage they racked up in the forty eight hours they were there. Konan he expected better from. Honestly, it was anyone’s guess what the fuck Obito was thinking when he decided to terrorize everyone in the world simultaneously. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to find him before they do anything stupid.”

He pushes the bamboo door open, waiting for Naruto to scramble up behind him, and walks out onto the suspended walkways. 

The river is pretty from a distance. It reflects the glare of the sun on its glassy surface, deep blue on the edges like a sapphire fringed with diamonds. They got close to it the first day, and deep as it was, it appeared shallow from the surface. Occasionally the lone fishing boat will venture down it, braving its currents, probably to reach the trading villages downstream. 

“Can Obito travel long distances?” Naruto asks. “I can’t remember.”

“Because you forgot or because of the split-memory?”

“Both?”

Naruto was still recovering from his memory merge. Some days he was convinced Sakura’s favorite color was actually green, not pink, and other days he woke up expecting to be back in Konoha, even though both versions of his experience had reconciled to the best of their ability. Hagoromo owed them that, at least. Some of the details were hazy around the edges, but that could also just be Naruto being himself.

“Last time I saw him he was still healing from Zetsu, but-” 

An explosion in the far distance.

“...yes. Aya, where are they?”

 _“To the North. Remember that fishing village you visited earlier?”_

He calls Moya and in a burst of smoke and dark feathers, she's perched on the edge of the roof. “Let’s go.”

Hanrua is a little fishing town on the coast, founded on nothing but spite and the sea, and given their unfortunate history of hurricanes and floods, the last thing they need is for their place on the economic reform bill to be jeopardized by his vigilante cousin and his friend.

The villagers barely pay them any head as they stomp down the dirt path. A man selling fish hooks on the street gives them an odd look from under his hat, but doesn’t otherwise comment. It might be the hawk perched on his shoulder or the snake wrapped around his shoulders, neither of them are native to the island.

“Where is he?”

“He’s - uh-”

“Baby Uchiha!” Obito greets cheerfully, morphing to life in front of him, and it takes every one of Sasuke’s hard earned instincts not to skewer him in the gut with Chidori (because Naruto made him leave his sword in the room they were sharing because apparently toting a sword around a peaceful village was not, in his words, ‘appropriate’), his form coming together in a whirlpool of light. “So good to see you again, little cousin.”

“Did you come here just to bother me?” He asks through bared teeth.

Obito folds his hands together. Konan, behind him, appears perfectly dignified and demure with her paper flower sitting behind her ear, like she didn’t single handedly take down two Kage. “About that, so sorry to ruin your little vacation-”

“It’s not a vacation.”

“-but a certain bottom feeder is here too, and I’d hate for him to sink any of his many rows of teeth into you.”

Naruto scrunches up his nose. “What do you mean _many?”_

“Considering his size, the amount of teeth he can fit in his mouth at any given time is quite impressive.” Obito nods. “Even if they aren’t all his.”

 _“What-”_

“Anyways,” He smiles sideways, and it’s even weirder without the mask. He’s so, so lucky that he’s legally dead and that the Kages haven’t deigned to do anything about him. As long as Zetsu is running around, then Obito’s presence is necessary, and it would be exceedingly hard to catch him anyways. “Unfortunately for everyone, until he rears his ugly head again there’s no telling where he is.” 

“Lovely.” Sasuke drawls. “And not my problem. Stay out of my way, don’t blow anything up.”

He glances at Konan. She raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. She’s handling Nagito’s death better than she did last time around. Hopefully it stays that way and she doesn’t decide to tank the burgeoning reforms they’re making to the shinobi system before they make any substantial progress. While he appreciates the ‘destroy it and build everything up from the ashes’ approach, it involves more collateral, and far less public support. Getting where they have has already been the mental equivalent of pulling nails. 

“Don’t cause any trouble.”

“I would never.” He lies.

“I still have Temari’s reports that prove otherwise.”

He waves a gloved hand nonchalantly. “Oh, well, the past is in the past.” He narrows in on the necklace, and his face makes a strange expression that Sasuke doesn’t like one bit.

“Aw,” He coos, positively gleeful. “Isn’t that adorable.” 

“What.” Sasuke grinds out from between his teeth. 

“A courting necklace?” He whistles. “Going old fashioned, Uzumaki? Don’t worry! I’m sure you’ll get Itachi’s blessing.”

Sasuke is going to murder someone. Obito, Naruto, himself, it doesn’t matter, one of them is going to die here. Leave the island, start a new life in Kusagakure. Change his name. They’d never find the bodies.

Unfortunately, he’s trying to make murder illegal.

Naruto sputters and fumes like a broken exhaust pipe and Sasuke says, before he can stop himself, “You’re legally married to Kakashi.”

Obito, for once, has absolutely nothing to say for himself. Neither does anyone else. 

“Kakashi-sensei’s married?” Naruto shrieks. “To him?” 

“Legally.” Sasuke repeats. “The act of giving a sharingan to someone else-”

“Is that legal?” Naruto continues, tearing his hands through his hair. “He was dead, how in the hell-? What kind of messed up tradition - has this happened before?” 

He shrugs. “According to custom, it makes you blood-related. Married, by legal standards.”

“You can just do that?” 

“What are they gonna do, kill us?”

Naruto freezes. “You have a sick sense of-”

Sasuke is done with this conversation, and gestures to the necklace. “You obviously need this more than I do.”

The edge of Konan’s mouth tips into a smile. “Technically those are for those intending to initiate a relationship. Obito is already married, so a late wedding gift would be more appropriate. Flowers are considerate gifts in Uchiha weddings, aren’t they?”

Naruto reaches down and plucks the saddest looking dandelion from the dirt he’s ever seen, and Obito just… takes the stupid fucking flower. 

“Congratulations.” Sasuke says, flat. 

“Naruto.” He says. “Eiko is expecting us.”

He turns on his heel and starts back down the path. 

“Wait for me!”

"Naruto, Sasuke." Eiko always knocks twice before she comes in, politely, not like Naruto who pounds his fist on the delicate wood frame and then barges in anyways, so he does her the courtesy of opening the door. She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, smearing some of the paint on her fingertips on her cheek. "I heard there was something going on earlier with Zetsu? I thought it might be a false alarm but some of the protective wards went off earlier so I thought I should ask."

"Obito and Konan were here." Sasuke replies, confident that she wouldn't tell anyone that they were. Konan is still technically a missing nin liable for the damage the Akatsuki dealt, but that's only if they can find her. "No one is in any danger."

"Ah." She relaxes. "That's good."

Her eyes flick to the kerosene lamp on the table where he's finishing his report. Inoichi and Ibikki, apparently, have been charged with the most unfortunate task of compiling a comprehensive report of everything that happened regarding the war, and his input is vital to the development of it. He doesn't particularly feel like cooperating, considering how little he owes the village, but Naruto was more than eager to offer his own perspective.

(This is confidential. Oh, so very confidential, and none of this report is going to be entered into public record as long as he's alive). 

She grins, then, when she sees the necklace on the table. "So... did you like it?"

He slams the door shut.

"Hey." Naruto whispers. Sasuke cracks an eye open. "If Obito is legally dead, does that make Kakashi a widow?"

"Ask Sakura."

(Kakashi wakes up to an inconspicuously placed note on his dresser the next morning, in the most familiar handwriting: _I want a divorce_ )

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is Anxiety_pickle feel free to yell at me for spawning this
> 
> Following installations possibly?? I have ideas.


End file.
